Gestapo Increases Pressure for Jewish Emigration from Old Reich

April 18, 1940

AMSTERDAM (Apr. 17)

Jewish communities in the old Reich are being subjected to increasing pressure to accelerate emigration, it was reported here today, despite Germany’s acute labor shortage and the fact that many young Jews are employed in agriculture.

Conditions vary in different cities. While Hamburg Jews are not forced to emigrate at present, in Berlin the Gestapo has ordered the Jewish community to submit daily a list of 70 Jews ready to emigrate. It is practically impossible to comply with the order since emigration outlets are almost non-existent.

Total Jewish emigration from the Old Reich in the first three months of this year averaged less than the figure demanded by the Gestapo for Berlin alone, where it is impossible to find 70 Jews with emigration possibilities and sufficient capital to pay the taxes and assessments levied on prospective emigrants.

Gestapo pressure is reflected in the Juedisches Nachrichtenblatt, Nazi-controlled Jewish organ. After last month’s appeal to Jewish organizations abroad and to emigrated Jews to find new homes for Jews still in the Reich, successive issues have been devoted almost exclusively to emigration problems and possibilities

It is feared that the lists which the Berlin Jewish Community submits to the Gestapo will be used to select persons for expulsion to the Lublin Jewish “reservation” in Poland or for illegal emigration via the Danube. It is learned that many Danube transports have been organized by the Gestapo, the Jews forced to go whether or not they wished to do so, after being charged heavy transportation fees by the Gestapo.

It is feared that the halting of expulsions from the Old Reich to Lublin after the exiling of the Jews of Stettin is only temporary and the deportations may be resumed at any moment.

The Nachrichtenblatt reports that 4,755 Jews emigrated from the Old Reich during the first three months of the year. The number does not include expulsions to Lublin and illegal emigration to Palestine. The United States received 2,364, Palestine 252 legal emigrants and the remainder went to South America, Africa, Asia and European countries.

Julius Streicher’s Fraenkische Tageszeitung complains that the tempo of “de-Judaization” in Nuremberg, home of the Nazi Congress, has been halted since the outbreak of the war. Nuremberg’s Jewish population was reduced from 8,266 in 1933 to 2,638 in 1938, not including non-Jewish “non-Aryans.” Of these, 1,030 went to the United States, of whom 63 per cent were merchants and tradesmen and the majority of the remainder professionals.